This is a clear example of being careful to use the entire context of a passage before believing what somebody else said, no matter how authoritative they may sound.
Many preachers have substituted the literal "eye of a needle" in Matthew 19:24, Mark 10:25 and Luke 18:25 to be a mythical small gate in Jerusalem where a camel has to remove its load and stoop and crawl to enter a small opening on the wall when the main gates were closed. This is a blatant example of not only Scripture distortion but Scripture corruption. For one, each of the passages used a different Greek word for "eye" compared to the other two. Only the Greek word for "camel" is common to all three. So it cannot even be a name of a gate.
First, there is no such documented gate in Jerusalem. Also, common sense dictates that if some merchant has a load to deliver, he waits the next day when the gates are reopened. Besides what stupid architect would build a walled city with a breach???? What walled city manager would not immediately repair a breach if there were such existing?
The conservatives and fundamentals accuse the prosperity gospel people of recklessly using the non-existent gate just to please their audience and keep the donations from rich people flowing into their coffers, and perhaps there is a lot of truth to that accusation as I have heard it myself even from respectable Charismatic preachers (although I do not believe that all of them have donations in their agenda, they are simply misinformed).
Second, the "small gate" myth basically destroys the gospel since the camel can actually enter the gate if he tried to work it by removing his load, stooping down, etc, etc. The subliminal message here is that we can actually attain salvation on our own human efforts if we remove our encumbrance or repent of our sin and then stoop low enough in humility which, of course, we know is not the gospel. Hence, careful preachers should avoid this misleading myth or be accused of being false teachers.
So the conservatives and fundamentalists insist that it is impossible to be saved without the actions of God. Though there is a lot of truth to that, they are also mistaken if, by salvation, they only mean justification by faith in the finished work of Christ. Remember, Christ was talking to Jews among whom, Enoch, Abraham, Issac, Jacob, Joshua, Daniel, David, Jeremiah, Isaiah, and even thousands more (God told Elijah that he had 7,000 folks who have not bowed the knee to Baal) were justified and saved from the penalty of sin WITHOUT the finished work of Christ. Do you follow??? They only had the Law and the Prophets BUT THEY WERE SAVED and God forbid that any serious Christian would claim that we would not see these people in heaven.
To make it contextually worse, these conservatives and fundamentalists claim ANOTHER MYTH that these Old Testament saved people were "really" looking forward to the life, death and resurrection of the Messiah and NOTHING COULD EVEN BE FARTHER FROM THE TRUTH (in fact, this claim is even worse than the "eye of a needle" myth!). C'mon, please apply common sense to your interpretations! The Jews had ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA of the New Testament gospel. In fact, up to the present thousands of Jews are still clueless! Yet they knew that the Old Testament had provision for repentance, deliverance and salvation from the penalty of sin, why would people like Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea desire the New Testament gospel?
Hmmm, so what is the New Testament gospel if it is NOT exactly being saved from the penalty of sin? What is REALLY NEW in the NEW Testament. The answer is what has always been elusive to the Western Church, the New Testament not only offers a "less effort" way to be saved from the penalty of sin, it offers far more than that, but the western church's fixation on the "free ticket to heaven" or freedom from the penalty of sin is blinding them to the full gospel message.
The New Testament gospel message should be something good way beyond what the Old Testament offers and it is not justification by faith. Why? Because justification by faith is Old Testament news. In fact, Paul used Abraham as an example of justification by faith. James used Abraham as proof of justification by works. The author of Hebrews used all of those Old Testament people of faith as further examples of true faith. So the New Testament did NOT offer justification by faith. It simply explained how justification by faith is realized, and the role of Christ in the process.
What is really NEW Good News and the ADDED VALUE of the New Testament is the availability of deliverance from the POWER of sin, that through the resurrection power of the Holy Spirit indwelling and filling the believer after reckoning the self dead to sin and alive to Christ, the believer has access to such power in order to moment by moment conquer the power and dominion of the sin nature and power to live like Christ BY FAITH and without any of the Old Testament ceremonial procedures, we have complete access to God's throne of grace.
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